


The Investment

by Happyorogeny



Series: The Drow [3]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Forgotten Realms, The Legend of Drizzt Series - R. A. Salvatore
Genre: Gen, Jarlaxle fixing all problems with jewellery, drow being drow, tw needle mention, tw racism, tw torture mention, tw xenophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 20:42:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18080552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Happyorogeny/pseuds/Happyorogeny
Summary: Artemis and his men were not getting along.





	The Investment

Jarlaxle hadn’t managed to survive so long and build the Underdarks most notorious mercenary organisation by allowing preventable social problems to grow underfoot. He had long ago realised that the High Priestesses didn’t want drow to cooperate. Particularly not the men. Cooperation led to the construction of social units beyond the family, led to power and influence that they couldn’t directly control. 

But speaking of what could and could not be controlled, Artemis and his men were not getting along. 

That was to be expected. In a way he had put a great burden on his poor abbil, to show his drow how an unbroken human behaved and acted, that he was their match in many ways. To have them learn to doubt. If humans weren’t necessarily so weak and inferior, what else in their world was worth questioning? 

But unfortunately, such change took time. Not everyone was quite as adaptable as Jarlaxle was, as he had had to be. Change felt like chaos and so they resisted it. So much of drow society and philosophy rested on the concept of solidity and tradition. Indeed, hadn’t they been thrown out of the feywild because they’d demanded a measure of continuity and stability from Corellon? Hadn’t they had to carve themselves a place in this world instead? Yes indeed, drow had never had anything, had never been given anything aside from what they could take for themselves by force. If they allowed chaos to fester, if they allowed change and the instability that came with it, they would be destroyed. 

Jarlaxle had sat through such sermons often, listened to young priestesses preaching to passersby in the low city. He wondered about it in idle moments. All good lies had truth in them. Just how much and just what parts, now, that was the whole trick of it. 

Let them have their tricks, for he had his own. Men didn’t run houses, except that the Bregan D’aerthe were basically a house and everyone knew it. Folk stepping outside their role in society would be struck down, except that he hadn’t been yet. Drow didn’t work with lesser races, except now Artemis was here and the match of half his men. 

Change took time. Time ought to be the one thing an elf had in abundance, but that didn’t hold true for drow and especially not for him. Change was painful, particularly for those who brought it. Including Artemis, who didn’t seem to realise quite how much of a marvel he was down here. Who would probably stab him on the spot if Jarlaxle suggested that he was an ambassador for the betterment of all mankind. 

And so he was delighted to see his office door had been tampered with. Very subtle work, too. Artemis had broken in and taken the earring. Wonderful! 

He set his hat on the back of his chair and settled down, stretching out his back with a satisfying pop. The day had been tiresome indeed. Payment negotiations were tedious and House Matrons were very inclined to try and shortchange him. He had been sure to make friends with the lower men of the house, and one of them was close with the daughter-treasurer. The house had the money. They didn’t always pay willingly, but they did pay. Eventually. Not the clients he would have chosen, but work had been slow of late. 

That led to trouble. Many of his men held other jobs- couriers, bodyguards, entertainers and consorts- and he had bade his battlemasters hold extra training sessions. But even with that the Bregan D’aerthe had an excess of free time on their hands. That was always dangerous. His men made their own entertainment and so many of them were stunted by their upbringing. A drow, frustrated and bored, would take out their annoyance on whomever they perceived to be lower than them. It caused issues with social cohesion, wearing away the tentative bonds forming amongst his men. It led to splinter groups and rival mercenary factions. He would not have it, not when he had worked so hard to bring near every sellsword in the Underdark under his control. 

And poor Artemis, well. Drow society marinated its citizens in superiority and xenophobia. They couldn’t conceive of a human amongst them that wasn’t a slave. Never mind one that outstripped them in many areas, one that Jarlaxle valued as much as he did anyone else. 

And so it had become a common and mean-spirited game to needle Artemis, speaking around him in rapid-fire undercommon that he couldn’t quite understand, throwing stones and darts into whatever little crevice he slept in, poking fun at the size and shape of his ears. 

Little cruelties that built into something dangerous. Last week, a group of five had decided to flush him out of his usual haunts, the abandoned rooms and quiet corridors. It had taken them half a day, but by sheer force of numbers they had succeeded in bullying him out into the main thoroughfares and cornering him in a side room. Jarlaxle wasn’t quite sure what they had ultimately intended. It would mean very little to them to kill some upstart human. Alternately, they might well have decided that frightening him was enough. 

What they had intended didn’t matter. Finding himself backed into a corner and outnumbered, Artemis had killed three of them and taken two very dangerous injuries. Only the intervention of some older mercenaries, irritated by the noise, had prevented things taking an even more lethal turn. The onlooking crowd had considered this great amusement by all accounts, taking bets on who they thought likely to win. 

Artemis had promptly caused great financial loss for many of them by hunting down one of his tormenters and killing him in the tunnels. The last one, being semi-sensible, had taken a reconnaissance mission to the surface that would render him unreachable for several months.

His men had killed each other before. Of course they had. But over time, over hard won experience he found the bulk of such deaths to be preventable. Much as Artemis was an interesting whittling mechanism for the stupid amongst them, it seemed a time-consuming strategy and a waste of a valuable asset. 

And it wore a person down, to be considered so low and worthless despite all their skill and all their cleverness. Artemis didn't care what folk thought of him- he couldn't afford to- but being surrounded by constant dismissal...well. Jarlaxle remembered it. Remembered being an amusement at best. 

Thus he had presented Artemis with a darksight earring, framing it as a strict investment on his own part. Artemis was already skilled enough in surveillance and stealth to match and even outstrip some of the drow. An aid to allow him to see as they did was the next logical step. Why have one of his better operatives run around half blind?

Better yet, it would stop a repeat incident. Artemis had already killed those who irritated him. Now that he could see them coming and had proved himself almost drow-like in his ferocity, all but the most hostile conservatives would be disinclined to actively attack him. After all, that greater shame than to be killed by a human?

Artemis had refused point blank to take it. Much as Jarlaxle had expected. Rewards and gifts were all too often vectors of control and obligation. And so the box and its contents had remained on carved edge of Jarlaxle’s ironwood bureau, small and dark and velvet, while Artemis decided what to do. All change took time, time where Jarlaxle bustled around the undercity and sent out his more socially inclined underlings in search of work. He had no intention whatsoever of allowing these violent delights to grow entirely out of his control. 

And why not invest in a new lock in the meantime? Something large and ominous and magically warded. Something that looked like a headache to break. Something that looked like a challenge. Jarlaxle himself, had he been confronted with such a thing, would have deemed lockpicking a waste of time and gone in through the nearest window. 

But Artemis was clearly pining for an opportunity to challenge himself, perhaps remind himself that the drow were wrong. He had spent the last ten days studying the new lock from a distance, sitting proudly on the fungalwood door into his office. Fungalwood doors could be charmed to swallow up the lock if they sensed an intruder trying to pick their way in. Drow didn’t tend to have wooden furnishings. Trees were rare in the darkness. Only the blood orchards bore any kind of wood at all, and all of that tended to stain a nasty shade of brown over time. Instead they grew their furniture from larger, more solid variations of the very same mushrooms that made up their everyday diet. 

Artemis was clearly very light of touch, for the lock sat proud on the door. He considered returning the lock to its creator, telling her that an untrained human had broken through in under five hours. The thought of her expression made him grin. 

Quick footsteps in the hallway outside had him palming a dagger, but it was only Scrap that appeared in his doorway. A young courier with long white hair twisted into a braid, a group of Jarlaxle’s street runners had discovered him half-dead in the gutters of the lower city and immediately dragged him back to Jarlaxle, proud of their find. Jarlaxle suspected the commoner had been grabbed off the streets by some noble house, to teach their young the finer arts of torture. He hadn’t spoken aloud since his recovery and communicated entirely in handspeak. 

“Artemis is bleeding.” He was one of the few to refer to the human by name. “He did something to his ear with a needle and an icecube.”

Overworlders had a haphazard approach to many things, including piercings. The icecube was a traditional method from what Jarlaxle understood, though his ears ached at the thought. He had been most careful with his earrings, so as not to lose any sensitivity. 

“Come, tell me where your message-running brings you. Any hint of dueling matrons or a nice house war?” Message runners knew more about the politics of the underdark than folk tended to realise. And Jarlaxle could discern much from where messages went and how many there were and the various wards and runes placed upon them.

“But the human. Won’t he die?”

Oh, that old nonsense. It was taught to young drow that overworlders were so weak a single scratch would kill them. Which wasn’t strictly a lie, if the blade was poisoned. In all lies linger the truth. 

“Don’t you worry about our human consultant, he’ll be up and about in no time.” He plucked a bottle of mushroom wine from under his desk. A passive-aggressive gift from a priestess who knew he hated the stuff. “Drink?” 

Artemis took full advantage of his new skill in the following weeks, testing it against the utter darkness that prevailed in the upper reaches of the fortress and squinting down into the clawrift. Indeed it became a brief and much more light hearted game to try and sneak up on him out of the darkness, only to be spotted and cursed at. A human that could see like a drow! What fun. 

“Artemis, darling. Please don’t teach my men to swear.” 

And he couldn’t deny that he had been looking forwards to this moment just a little, as Artemis turned to scowl at him. Colour looked very different in darksight, and so did drow. Drow women tended towards complete inky darkness, pure and clear in its depth of colour. But the men often had a subtle sheen to them of midnight blue or deep indigo or a rich green. And Jarlaxle was lucky enough to show all three, purple highlights across his shoulders and collarbones, blue on his chest and stomach, green on his hands and legs.

Artemis had never quite seen him like this before, which was surely why he stared. 

“You look like a magpie.”

“A magpie?” Whatever that was, it had to be a handsome creature indeed. 

“A flashy bird that steals anything shiny and makes all manner of noise.” 

“Why, they sound quite marvelous! Now, I have a fine little rescue mission here, two houses kidnapping one another’s family members for ransom...”

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this please come find me on tumblr.com!


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